


leave nothing standing

by starstrung



Category: Ghostbusters (2016)
Genre: F/F, radiation poisoning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-13
Updated: 2019-04-13
Packaged: 2020-01-12 22:01:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18455465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starstrung/pseuds/starstrung
Summary: Going upstairs after Holtz, Erin observes the air with some trepidation, as if she’s going to see sine waves of gamma radiation oscillating from out of the nuclear reactor. It sits, unobtrusive and relatively small, on a worktable.





	leave nothing standing

**Author's Note:**

> Don't try this at home, or anywhere.

Patty gently slaps the socket wrench out of Holtz’s bandaged hand. It falls easily back to the work table, and Holtzmann narrows her eyes at Patty, hand still half-raised.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Patty says, unmoved. “You broke your wrist. You need to take a break.”

“Come on,” Holtzmann says dismissively. “It’s just a little broken. Look.” She shakes her right hand a little, as if to prove her point, but Abby specifically told the doctor to bandage her hand extra tightly. They watch as Holtzmann’s wrist, rendered shapeless with the amount of packaging on it, is shaken very stiffly, with little effect.

“It’s just eight weeks,” Erin says quietly, trying to comfort her. She still feels guilty for what happened. If she hadn’t had her attention divided with adjusting the charge on her proton gun, she would have been able to stop the ghost from charging Holtzmann. She had been thrown thirty feet, landing badly on her arm.

“I’ve got shit to build!” Holtzmann says. “I’m in the middle of putting a new stability damper on the proton guns, fixing the overheating problem on Patty’s ghostchipper, adding a—”

“Wait, what overheating problem?” Patty says, alarmed.

“Nothing, it’s fine,” Holtzmann says. “Maybe start wearing gloves,” she adds as an afterthought.

“Not cool, Holtz,” Patty says.

“Not to mention,” Holtzmann continues, as if uninterrupted, “I’m halfway through a miniaturized nuclear reactor. I can’t stop in the middle! Who knows how many Grays that thing’s giving us right now? Anyone want to know what radiation sickness feels like? Anyone?”

“Holtzmann!” Abby says sharply. “What did I say about nuclear reactors?”

“I do believe it was ‘Goddammit Holtzmann, not where I eat’,” Holtz answers. “Don’t worry, it’s upstairs.”

“ _That’s_ your rule about nuclear reactors?” Erin asks Abby. Abby shrugs, and goes back to her soup.

“Why do you need a nuclear reactor? Don’t you remember what happened to the last one?” Erin asks.

“Yeah, it exploded. Inside a ghost portal. It was _awesome_ ,” Holtz says.

“To be fair, it was pretty fucking awesome,” Patty says, and Holtz grins at her.

“Okay, Holtzmann, Erin will help you finish your nuclear reactor,” Abby says.

“Me? Why me?” Erin says with surprise.

“You’re the one who gets warm and tingly inside around radiation,” Abby answers, Holtz laughing delightedly across from her. “And you have forty-two publications, Dr. I’m-Up-For-Tenure-Review.”

Erin groans into her hands. There is a significant part of her that is still bitter about tenureship slipping out of her grasp, even though she’s turned down several offers since then.

The other part of her, however, is touched. She didn’t know that Abby memorized the number of publications Erin had. She looks up to find Holtzmann appraising her.

“What?” Erin asks nervously.

“You’ve got yourself a pair of pretty steady hands there,” Holtz says.

“I mean,” Erin says, flattered, looking down at them before she realizes. “Wait, you told me I had long arms once, and then I almost _died_.” Although, she hadn’t much minded at the time. She still doesn’t, in all honesty.

“Erin, don’t be afraid to embrace your natural assets,” Abby tells her, clearly enjoying this.

“Yeah, look at it this way. Holtzmann just wants your body for science,” Patty adds. She smiles knowingly, seeming to have recovered from the ghostchipper revelation.

Holtzmann is nodding vigorously now, and begins to speak quickly, as if impatient. “All right, this could work. Take these and follow me, Ghost Girl.” With her uninjured hand she begins to pile tools and spare parts into Erin’s arms.

Going upstairs after Holtz, Erin observes the air with some trepidation, as if she’s going to see sine waves of gamma radiation oscillating from out of the nuclear reactor. It sits, unobtrusive and relatively small, on a worktable.

Unless Holtz is showing them something new, the rest of the team usually doesn’t come up here. Now Erin can see the improvised attempt at fair warning: yellow crepe paper banners with drawn-on radioactive symbols festooning the ceiling and walls. A note that says “IT’S SAFE TO TOUCH THIS NOW.” is affixed to an unidentifiable mass of exposed wiring and PVC, an empty pizza box wedged underneath it to keep it level.

In total honesty, Erin has seen engineering labs that have gotten away with worse atrocities. Although the untested half-cooked nuclear reactor is perhaps enough to give pause.

“All right, what do you need me to do?” Erin asks Holtz, putting down the tools and parts on a relatively uncluttered surface. She rolls up her sleeves.

“Good question, good question. Keep ‘em coming.” Holtzmann says brightly, peering into the machine.

“Haven’t you built a nuclear reactor before?” Erin asks.

“Please. I could pull out a nuclear reactor in my sleep. From things I find in my kitchen,” Holtzmann says, and the worrying part is that Holtzmann doesn’t sound like she’s bragging, which makes Erin think she _has_ built a nuclear reactor from things she found in her kitchen.

“This isn’t _just_ a nuclear reactor,” Holtzmann tells her.

Her curiosity peaked, Erin forgets to be cautious and joins Holtzmann in peering down at the instrument, trying to figure out what it does.

“Is this—” She gasps. “Are you trying to make it give off an electromagnetic pulse wave?”

Holtzmann grins delightedly. “One that only affects ghosts. A wide-range ectoplasmic disrupter. Hell yeah, I am.”

“This is amazing,” Erin says, not even bothering to hide how impressed she is. “What kind of radius do you think—?”

Holtz shrugs. “Eh. Probably somewhere between ten feet and the entire city? Only one way to know for sure.”

“Full disclosure,” Erin says, straightening. “The last time I tried to build something was for my master’s thesis and it ended with a rogue spinning laser and three separate electrical fires,” she admits. “I almost blinded the undergrad.”

Predictably, Holtzmann finds this absolutely _hilarious_. “I have. So many questions,” she says, with delight.

“Later,” Erin says, feeling herself turning red. “First, why don’t you tell me what’s what so I don’t accidentally set it off?”

“All right, step up, step up,” Holtzmann says, even though Erin is as close to the machine as she is. “You have the basics: a twice-enforced vacuum chamber that I rigged up, a standard deuterium electrolytic separator, a medium-sized ballast resistor. You know, the bare necessities.”

“Sure,” Erin says. She knows what those things are, in theory. She peeks around the other side of it, trying to see how all the different parts fit together.

“Hey, don’t be afraid to—” Holtzmann grabs Erin’s arm with her uninjured hand, and shoves it into the machine, “—really get in there. Get yourself comfortable. Become one with the plasmic injectors.”

Erin yelps. After a moment of frozen surprise, she begins to feel around with her hand. She has no idea what she is looking for.

“What do you think?” Holtzmann says, practically bouncing on the balls of her feet.

“Yeah,” Erin says, weakly, trying not to imagine her skin peeling away and turning into dust. “It feels good.”

Holtz grins, leaning close, and Erin feels mildly like she’s passed some kind of test. “Let’s get started then.”

They work for hours, Holtz showing her what she’s done so far, directing Erin to lift or turn things when her broken wrist prevents her. It reaches midnight, Abby and Patty long since left for home, but Holtzmann doesn’t give any indication of stopping, and Erin finds that she’s enjoying herself too much to stop.

It seems to Erin that Holtzmann has nearly finished with the prototype, but has hit a wall near the end, unable to get the spinning plasma chamber from igniting at just the right moment to produce an area effect pulse wave.

After a while, Erin begins to feel a strange sensation spreading up her arms. It is the same sensation as when she’s holding a fully charged proton gun, like the top layer of her skin is vibrating off, like her bones have begun conducting currents. She looks up to meet Holtzmann’s eyes, and finds her grinning.

“Is this supposed to happen?” Erin asks. Her hands where they are buried in the machine are now bathed in a dull orange glow.

“Absolutely no idea,” Holtzmann says, chewing on her gum. She peers over Erin’s shoulder, standing very closely behind her.

“What if it’s radiation poisoning? Maybe we should stop?” Erin says, uncertain.

“Nah, radiation sickness is way worse,” Holtzmann says. “You’re not hemorrhaging, are you?”

“Not that I know of?” Erin says.

“Then you’re fine,” Holtzmann says. She snaps her gum next to Erin’s ear, and Erin jumps.

“Can you not—?” Erin says, panicking.

“Hey, deep breaths, deep breaths,” Holtz says, and goes to the panel of dials that’s rigged up to the beacon. “Don’t move anything, you might set off a chain reaction, and we don’t want that. Probably.”

Erin, who had been on the verge of pulling back, freezes now. “Excuse me? A _chain reaction_?”

“Could be catastrophic, could be pretty boring, but let me try to change some things around,” Holtz says, and Erin tries not to think of the note of hopefulness in Holtz’s voice around the word _catastrophic_.

“No catastrophes please!” Erin says. God, she’s sweating.

“How’s this?” Holtzmann says, rotating some dials. Suddenly the sensation seems to change in frequency, less like someone’s drilling into her skull and more like the air around her is thrumming low like a car engine, deep pulsing waves that travel up her arm, bounce around her ribcage, travel down her thighs.

“Oh, _fuck,_ ” Erin says, every part of her shuddering, her eyes slipping closed. It feels like her spine turns into liquid, and she goes a little boneless. If she wasn’t leaning against the thing, her legs would have given out by now.

“Shit,” Holtz says, looking alarmed by this reaction. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, it just—” The beacon pulses again, and she loses track of what she was going to say and just _moans_.

Silence from Holtz. Erin feels like there’s still aftershocks of it going through her, but she has just enough of her faculties left to register that she’s _fucking getting off on radiation_. While _Holtz is right there_.

“Can I — is it okay if I pull my arm out?” Erin says, her voice small. She can’t bear to look up.

“You can,” Holtzmann says. “Do you want to though?”

No, she really, really doesn’t. She wants Holtz to turn whatever it is up a notch and put a hand down her pants and—. Another wave of it goes through her, and Erin swears again. “What _is_ it?” she asks.

“If I had to guess, I must have changed the frequency of the disruptor waves so that organic matter is getting disrupted too. Like a radiation-based sonicator. Or one of those pulse generators people hook up to their vagus nerves.”

“I don’t know what that is. How do you even know what that is,” Erin says.

“Okay, so I fooled around a bit in college. Just a little light ectopic simulation,” Holtzmann says, and Erin isn’t even going to try to open that entire can of worms.

“Are you saying my organic matter is getting disrupted right now? With radiation? That sounds bad. That doesn’t sound like it would be a good thing,” Erin says, all very quickly, because she can feel another pulse rolling into her and this time she feels it in the backs of her fucking eyeballs. Her toes go weirdly numb.

“Sure doesn’t,” Holtz says, and Erin looks up to shoot her a glare and Holtz looks right back, her gaze uncharacteristically steady. Erin has just enough time to think _oh, I want her to_ , and then Holtz is moving so she’s pressed right up against Erin’s back and is pulling her shirt out of her pants while Erin tries frantically to unfasten her belt with the hand that isn’t still jammed inside the disruptor.

“Can’t believe I finally get a hand down your weird pantsuit ensemble and I only have one goddamn hand,” Holtz says, sounding frustrated.

“Wait, does this mean you’ve been wanting to— Look, I had to go to a deans’ meeting today, okay, I don’t usually wear a— _fuck_ , Holtz.” This time the pulse is strong enough that Erin’s vision gets these bright white starbursts in the corners of it. This is a bad fucking idea, Erin thinks, just so that her future self will be able to think back on this moment with fully warranted regret.

Between the two of them, they manage to get Erin’s pants open, and even though Holtz is clumsy with her left hand, Erin’s far too desperate to care at this point. The waves feel like they’re amplifying, or maybe that’s just because Holtz has managed to build up a rhythm that’s syncing up with the flares of orange-ish light coming from inside the instrument, just so that each time the pulse waves swell again, Erin lets out a high-pitched whine.

She’s always been self-conscious about the noises she makes in bed — had a partner comment on it once, and it’s bothered her ever since. This time, though, Holtz’s breathing getting ragged every time Erin makes another desperate noise, it’s not really an issue. Erin’s too far gone to care about anything like that, just hitches a knee up on the work table so that Holtz can get a better angle.

“Maybe keep it down, it’s possible some of this stuff is activated by high frequency noises,” Holtz says, while she’s still _fucking her_ , so of course Erin screams when she comes.

“Fuck,” Erin says, and pulls her arm out, stumbling back. Holtz moves past her to pull a lever, and then the entire thing goes dark, the orange light dying.

“Is it still going to work after this?” Erin says, rotating her wrist a little where it’s gotten stiff, slightly numb. It feels kind of warm and feverish. Maybe that’s a bad sign.

“Definitely have to make a few adjustments before I try to use it to blow up some ghosts,” Holtz says. “Sure did find another use for it though.” Her eyes travel up Erin’s body, her undone pants, her rumpled shirt, her flushed face.

“No we did not!” Erin says, and now that she isn’t feeling unholy levels of, whatever, _gamma radiation induced lust_ , she’s kind of freaking out. “That was, oh my god, I can’t believe we, oh my god!” She puts her face in her hands.

“Come on, this can’t be the weirdest thing you’ve gotten off to, right?” Holtz says. “Once I was trying to fix up some of the ghost grenades, messed up the pin mechanism, used it as a vibrator instead. Spent the entire afternoon up here,” Holtzmann says, eyes going distant as she reminisces.

Wait. “Wasn’t that last week?” Erin asks her, looking up from her hands. “We all thought you were just really deep into a project. You wouldn’t even come downstairs for lunch.”

Holtz shrugs. “You can find your inspiration anywhere.”

“I’m not judging,” Erin says, carefully, although she doesn’t know if she’ll be able to use a ghost grenade ever again, “but this was _really dangerous_. What if I have radiation poisoning? Oh god, can you check if I have radiation poisoning?”

Holtzmann bounces a little on the balls of her feet, again. “Oh, yeah, sure,” she says (did she just wink?), and leads Erin to the other side of the lab where she’s set up a cot and a nest of blankets. Holtz has Erin sit down on this, and then spits out her gum and begins to zip open her own jumpsuit. She's not wearing a bra.

“Wait,” Erin says, aware that she has rapidly lost control of the situation yet again. “What are you doing!”

Holtz blinks at her, tossing away her jumpsuit. “Oh, my bad, I thought ‘inspect me for radiation sickness’ was code for ‘let’s keep fucking’.”

“It really isn't,” Erin says. “No one says that.”

“Do you still want me to go down on you though?” Holtz says, and kind of trails her hand up Erin’s thigh a little, so Erin just thinks _fuck it, I can always go to the ER after, it’s on my way home_ , and lets Holtz pulls off her pants and get to it.

  


 

A week later, Holtzmann unveils the finished ectoplasmic disruptor. They did manage to get it to work eventually. Lot of sleepless nights, although Erin has to say that not all of those hours were used for building. It is possible that there might have been some detours and distractions along the way, especially when Holtz convinced Erin to try out one of the grenades.


End file.
